Alabama gymnasts enter SEC championship as the team to beat

TUSCALOOSA -- Alabama's gymnastics team carries a label in the postseason it hasn't held in a while: Favorite.

Coach Sarah Patterson's most seasoned and stocked roster in years earned the Crimson Tide the nation's No. 1 ranking (based on scoring average) exiting the regular season, which puts the target on its back, starting with Saturday's 3 p.m. SEC championship meet at the Veteran Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Fla.

"It's definitely a new thing for us this year," junior Kayla Hoffman said. "We're not really the underdogs anymore. We're not really in the shadow of any other team. We've been the forerunner the whole season. ... All we have to do is just keep doing what we've been doing and really not put any extra pressure on ourselves."

Senior Ricki Lebegern has been a key contributor to Alabama gymnastics' return to the top of the national rankings (UA photo).Led by accomplished veterans like Hoffman, Morgan Dennis, Ricki Lebegern, Kassi Price and Ashley Priess, Alabama's team has topped a 197.2 score six times this season, including its past five competitions.

"Nobody is better than we are on any given night," Patterson said, "but we're not better than anybody else if we don't do our job. ... You've got to do it on that given night, or it doesn't count."

By comparison, last year's squad topped that mark only once while battling a rash of injuries throughout the regular season.

Alabama did throw a 197.3 to win last year's SEC championship to end a six-year drought for the program. But it was considered an upset when the Crimson Tide beat Georgia, which stumbled that day but went on to avenge the defeat by winning a fifth consecutive NCAA title weeks later.

Now in its first season since the retirement of coach Suzanne Yoculan, Georgia ranks fifth nationally, behind Alabama and Florida (4), a program on the rise that actually sets up as the Crimson Tide's main competition this time around.

The Gators will have the benefit of a home crowd both for SECs and next month's NCAA championships, which will be held in Gainesville, Fla.

But the Crimson Tide is trying not to think too far past today's SEC title defense against a seven-team field rounded out by Arkansas (8), LSU (10), Auburn (15) and Kentucky (18).

"We're as healthy as we're going to be," Patterson said. "It's a maintenance thing right now. We've upgraded pretty much everything we're going to upgrade. Now it's just going out and kind of putting the exclamation point on a great season."